Hygiene essentials for the dedicated grappler?

In the Shower

1. Do not lather directly under the flow of water. Allow soap to remain on skin momentarily.
2. Use a loofah (mesh sponge) but not too vigorously. Vigorous scrubbing will cause small abrasions to the surface of the skin allowing penetration by the sources of infection.
3. Wash the back of the neck and hairline thoroughly. The Collar Tie is responsible for the over abundance of skin infections found here. Our hands touch everything in the wrestling room including the mats, our bodies, our opponent’s body and anything else you might pick up. Everything collected by our hands is transferred to the back of our opponent’s neck. Wash this area twice.
4. Wear shower shoes. Athlete’s foot is caused by the same Tinea (fungus) that causes ringworm.
5. Do not share towels and wash towels after each use.
6. Dry off thoroughly.
7. Wear loose fitting clothes to allow your skin to breathe.

In the Gym

We also need to protect ourselves on the mats. We all know that the mats are a battlefield. They are a place we go to compete or to train and prepare for competition. Part of this preparation and training should include proper hygiene. Here are a few tips that can help in the room.

1. Carry your shoes to practice. When leaving the room for water or bathroom breaks wipe your shoes before entering back into the room. Shoes can be wiped on a towel dampened with solution from your bucket of mat cleaner. Wet the towel in the bucket before cleaning the mats.
2. Fighters who train barefoot should never walk on the floor without proper foot coverings.
3. The foot coverings should always be removed before entering the mats or ring.
4. Change your shirt often during practice. Once a shirt becomes soaked in sweat it becomes permeable. Your sweat becomes a vehicle for infections to pass through your clothing and onto your skin.
5. Wear a thick cotton t-shirt or clothing made of synthetic fibers that "wick" the sweat away from the body, helping to keep the skin dry.
6. When sitting on the wall do not play with the mats. Wrestlers often lean with their backs against the wall with their hands at their sides touching the edges of the mats along the wall. Take a look at what is in between the wall and the edge of the mat. When was the last time this area was cleaned and when was the last time your wall mats were cleaned?
7. Do not train with partners who have skin infections and do not train if you, yourself are infected.
8. Cover and treat any trauma to the skin including, cuts, scrapes, and new tattoos. New tattoos are the product of the skin being pierced literally thousands of times. Always apply an antibiotic ointment or healing salve before covering for added protection. Of course this is going to fall off during training and will have to be recovered.
9. When leaving the room always, always, always, consider yourself contaminated because you are. Shower immediately and properly. If a shower is not available use a body wipe to hold you over until you can shower.

Don't Forget The Equipment. Be sure to use Defense Sanitizer on the following items.

Having a clean room is also a necessity but a clean room is more then just mopping the mats. There are many more surfaces that we come in contact with other than floor mats. Consider cleaning the following:

1. Wall mats.
2. Takedown dummies. (Remove the clothing and launder it and wipe down vinyl surfaces.)
3. Throw dummies.
4. Crash pads or throw mats.
5. Fighters, wipe down your bags, bag gloves and your hands after wearing bag gloves.
6. Fungi like to live in damp and dark places. Make your room light and dry. A dehumidifier can pull moisture out of your room.
7. Battling skin infections is more then just topical. Diet can play a huge role in how healthy our skin is and healthy skin is harder to infect. Here are a few diet and skin care tips:
8. Keep your blood sugars under control. Aim for blood sugars of 80 mg/dl to 120 mg/dl before meals, and 100 mg/dl to 140 mg/dl at bedtime.
9. Keep your Hemoglobin A1c at 7% or less (a 3 month average blood sugar test). This prevents dry skin.
10. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Of course when cutting weight we all would love to have eight glasses of water however we just cannot do this. Applying lotion to the skin will help keep it moist.
11. Eat whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and small amounts of lean protein rather then sugary or fat laden foods. Keep a balanced diet even when cutting back.
12. Rest to increase your body’s resistance. You will catch infections easier if you are worn down.
13. Once infected, proper care is required to rid you of the infection and promote healing.
14. Do not touch the infection. Wash your hands immediately if you do touch an infection.
15. Consult your trainer or physician with all possible infections. The sooner you treat an infection the less established it would be. The infection will be easier to clear up, creating less damage to the skin.
16. Use medicine completely and as recommended. The infection may still be present even though it may not be visible.
17. Use the proper medication for each infection. Using the wrong medicine my make the infection worse. An example of this is using cortisone creams on fugal infections, which help fungus grow.
18. Many of us train for hours a day for competition, some are coaches and some just want to stay in shape. Whatever reason we have to be on the mat or in the ring, we all share the common threat of skin infections. Preventing, treating and curing skin infections can be made easier with a little education on the topic.

Hope this helps,

Guy
Defense Soap
 
Last edited:
I will post our UK reps info in a few when I get into my office.

Guy
Defense Soap
 
GARRAfightwear.com

These guys carry our bars. If you require something else you can contact them and ask them to bring it in or contact me directly. Any support you can give one of resellers is always appreciated.

Guy
Defense Soap
 
Defense Soap said:
GARRAfightwear.com

These guys carry our bars. If you require something else you can contact them and ask them to bring it in or contact me directly. Any support you can give one of resellers is always appreciated.

Guy
Defense Soap
Click to expand...

Cheers fella! I mean Guy! :icon_chee
 
hot water. it does just as much as soap does.
funk just happens.
people that use defense soap get funk.
people that dont ALSO get funk.
it just happens.
be clean.
dont have a smelly gi.
brush your teeth.
 
Fedorzilla said:
Prevention

  • However, DO NOT FUCK AROUND WITH STAPH. If you have something that looks like Staph and weeps it will spread like crazy and that's not even discussing MRSA. That shit will literally kill you and giving it to your teammates because of your own negligence is up there with holding submissions after a tap (or worse depending on the consequences) and we all know how much of a d-bag move that is.

    [takes deep breath and relaxes]
Click to expand...


  • I couldn't agree more. I've been out of training for the past month while playing whack-a-mole with a staph infection.

    At the end of June, some kid with Edward Scissorhand fingernails opened a huge gash in my neck (it wouldn't stop bleeding, and I ended up in the emergency room to have it glued back together). While cutting me, he must have pushed some nastiness up in my neck because staph started sprouting up a few days later. First the doc put me on ten days of Ceflax, which kept it under control but didn't stomp it out. When it started to proliferate all over my neck and chin again, the doc put me on 14 days of a higher dosed antibiotic.

    And so, in addition to not training when you have staph, keep staph and other skin infections under control by following the following ten commandments of BJJ hygiene. I've posted these before, but they're worth repeating:

    1. Thou shalt wear a clean gi to every class. Thy claims of inconvenient launderettes and insufficient multitudes of gis doth not excuse wearing a dirty gi.

    2. Thou shalt ensure thy body is reasonably clean before training, remembering that recent menstruation or copulation may require additional cleaning.

    3. Thou shalt not train whilst afflicted with illness. Training whilst ill is accursed to you and your fellow students, while bringing blessings to the bacteria and viruses.

    4. Thou shalt cover thy feet when stepping off the mat, especially if visiting the lockerroom or the porcelain shrine.

    5. Thou shalt clean they own blood and vomit. Puttest away thy childish notion that thy nurse maid will cleanse the spilling of your innards.

    6. Thou shalt trim they nails. Fight not with scratching and clawing like a cat in the jungle but with technique, and thy way will be lightened.

    7. Thou shalt maintain good oral hygiene so as not to offend peers and ensure your teeth don't fallest out whilst training.

    8. Thou shalt shower after every class. Water and soap doth not kill all bacteria and viruses, so a good scrubbing with a small towel designed for such purposes is a further blessing.

    9. Thou shalt bandage thy wounds to reduce the likelihood of infection in yourself or others

    10. Thou shalt wash thy hands after visiting the porcelain shrine. If thy hands smell like the paper with which thy wipeth, washeth thy hands again.
 
Always keep a bottle of our skin sanitizer and wipes when showering isnt available. Our lotion is critical too, since hydrated skin is less susceptible to mat burns and abrasions. Leave on products are the most effective because they stay in contact with the skin for a longer period of time.
 
Common sense, really. Be clean before you go train, use moisturizer, cover open wounds, wear clean clothes. Shower afterwards. Don't roll on dirty mats, or with dirty people. It's not rocket science.
 
Fedorzilla said:
If you do (God forbid) get something on your skin, go see a fucking dermatologist and get it evaluated. If it's ringworm, I like the bleach and ultra strength Lotrimin, but there are stronger medications out there that aren't OTC. I normally try the bleach and ultra strength Lotrimin routine and stay out of class (attend but don't roll or let the infection contact the mats -- if I can't step on them because I've got athlete's foot... so be it). If it doesn't go away, doctor. However, DO NOT FUCK AROUND WITH STAPH. If you have something that looks like Staph and weeps it will spread like crazy and that's not even discussing MRSA. That shit will literally kill you and giving it to your teammates because of your own negligence is up there with holding submissions after a tap (or worse depending on the consequences) and we all know how much of a d-bag move that is.


[takes deep breath and relaxes]
Click to expand...



Yeah, I had MRSA a while back, not exactly sure how I came down with it... I first thought it was ring-worm and tried some stuff that did nothing, then I thought it was STAPH and tried some stuff that was supposed to treat STAPH, but it didn't respond to any of the treatment attempts... Finally it went away after a few days of treatment using antibiotics typically used specifically for MRSA, along with decolonization treatment in my nose. Thus, by process of elimination, it was MRSA.

MRSA is nothing to laugh at...
 
AthletcBodyCare said:
Always keep a bottle of our skin sanitizer and wipes when showering isnt available. Our lotion is critical too, since hydrated skin is less susceptible to mat burns and abrasions. Leave on products are the most effective because they stay in contact with the skin for a longer period of time.
Click to expand...

Are you interested in me comparing your product to Defense Soap? Send me a PM or just tell me in this thread so I can send you my address so you can send me a sample.

Thank you
 
All samples have been sent. If you had requested one check your mailbox early next week. Guys in Canada might have to check later in the week.

Guy
Defense Soap
 
why use athleticbodycare lotion and not say....any other lotion? lol

Anyway, I've heard that the hot water you are likely to shower under isn't strong enough to kill pretty much anything. You'd burn yourself.

(There's a reason you boil things, and not just run them under hot water)

But I can't verify.
 
jeffbasher said:
hot water. it does just as much as soap does.
funk just happens.
Click to expand...

Di...did you just say that hot water cleans and kills bacteria as well as soap?

(/Ebonics)Thas jus strait ignint dawg.(/end Ebonics)
 
FREAK656 said:
Di...did you just say that hot water cleans and kills bacteria as well as soap?

(/Ebonics)Thas jus strait ignint dawg.(/end Ebonics)
Click to expand...

If you had the water hot enough to bathe in that it would kill bacteria, you would have skin burns from the water. Regular soaps work by basically making your skin harder to cling on for dirt particles. They really don't do much in regard for bacteria, fungi or viruses, unfortunately.

However, the oils in Defense Soap are actually clinically tested to help kill the bad 'germs' while doing minimal damage to the natural healthy skin bacteria.
 
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